Walking is good exercise, and thus a good exercise is walking, so can I infer that making a walking stick by hand is a good woodworking exercise? Well, I guess that is not a good inference. But here is what I am going to do. Make a walking stick, aka cane, using hand tools.

Here’s the plan: I have a scrap piece of 3/4″ quarter-sawn white oak, and I am split it into two strips, laminate the strips, then start the exercise. Now here’s the problem. I’m quite sure how I am going to do this, so I am going to wing it one step at a time as I go along.

The long part and the handle

Step one: Done. The strips were glued together and sawn into a nice square. That was the easy part.

Layout for the octagon

Step two: Make the long part of the square cane round. First, I laid out a grid on the ends to lay out an octagon. To help keep me on track, I used a marking gauge to lay out the lines down the length of the stock, then penciled them in to make them easy to see. Next, I used a jack plan to make the square into the octagon.

The planing work

The planing work is pretty easy, but I have been sick for the past four days, and I have been deprived of most of my strength, so I had to rest between sides.

The octagon

In the due course of time, the octagon is done! Now to figure out the next step!

3 Responses to Exercise two ways

If you intend to round this, or do something more to it than leave it octagonal, I would suggest a spokeshave. I love working with a spokeshave, so am showing my bias. Show us a photo of the finished results. Hope you get to feeling better.

Of course the benefit of a walking stick does come mostly in walking, Yaakov. I have joined a walking group at my school. Walking for six weeks. 10,000 steps a day. I will be thinking of your stick. Hope you are completely healed soon. Lots of sickness in our area of Chicago – stores without cough meds or other such things. Shalom.